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Sounds & Words
Week 3 Michaelmas 2010
Mark J. Jones
markjjones@cantab.net

Last week…
• Airstreams
– pulmonic, glottalic, velaric
• Vowel quadrilateral
– height + fronting + rounding
• Phonemes & allophones
– physics – the actual sounds heard
– function – lexical contrasts & sound patterns

This week…
• Talk in more detail about phonemes & allophones in
English
– some English allophones are phonemes in other languages
– some English phonemes are allophones in other languages
• Different languages divide up phonetic space in different
ways

Phonemes & allophones
• Phonemes are sounds which are lexically contrastive
– ‘pin’ vs. ‘tin’ vs. ‘kin’ vs. ‘sin’ vs. ‘fin’ vs. thin’
– these words are minimal pairs
• they differ by one sound only
• Minimal pairs main way of identifying contrasts
– commutation test
• Need not be real words:
– ‘tap’ vs. ‘dap’
– ‘dap’ not a real word, but it could be

Phonemes & allophones
• The sounds we hear are called phones
– aspirated alveolar plosive [tʰ] in ‘tin’
– aspirated velar plosive [kʰ] in ‘kin’
• Allophones are contextual variants of the same
phoneme
– in different contexts
• ‘tell’ with dark final [lˠ]
• ‘let’ with light initial [l]
– complementary distribution
– within the same lexical context, e.g.
• ‘cat’ with final [t] vs. [ʔ]

Allophones
• REMEMBER:
• phonemes are not real, they are abstract
• what we hear are (allo)phones
– allophones are grouped into phonemic categories
• We ignore phonetic differences and focus on contrast
– stan vs. tan
– red vs. thread
– pill vs. lip
– cull vs. cud

Allophones - Issues
• Do listeners really link phones in different contexts
together?
– some lexical patterns:
• ‘tell’ (dark [lˠ]) linked to ‘telling’ (light [l])
• ‘fourteen’ (aspirated [tʰ]) and ‘sixteen’ (unaspirated [t])
• ‘set off’ ( [tʰ] ) and ‘set down’ ( [ʔ] )
• ‘ticker’ ( [kʰ] ) and ‘ticking’ ( [k̟ʰ] )
– Why wouldn’t they? Humans are good at pattern recognition
• group stars into constellations, see images in clouds, flames,
shingle on a beach

Allophones – issues
• Experimental evidence
– listeners compensate for context
• [s] with lip-rounding sounds more like [ʃ]
• create a synthetic fricative half-way between [s] and [ʃ]
• in a rounded vowel context, listeners claim to hear more [s]
– it isn’t really [s]; it’s neither [s] nor [ʃ]
– they compensate for contextual rounding
– hear the hybrid fricative as [s]
• That said, directly proving the existence of the phoneme
is tricky (cf. the atom)
– it’s an abstract entity

Phoneme – what symbol?
• As the phoneme is abstract the choice of symbol is
technically arbitrary
– English /r/ is not a trill in most accents (i.e. [r])
• square brackets = physical reality
• slash brackets = abstraction
• in recent phonological theory this is not the case
– blurring of boundary between phonetics & phonology
• division of labour
• content of abstract symbolisation

Some RP allophones
• Two major causes for allophones:
– segmental context
– syllabic context
• Segmental context
– cannot move seamlessly from one segment to next
– coarticulation – articulations interact
– effects predictable to some extent
• Syllabic context
– more mysterious
– effects not predictable

Syllable structure
• Nucleus is obligatory
– usually a vowel
– can have syllabic consonants too in some languages
• Onsets are very common
– onset-nucleus most common syllable shape (transition?)
– onsets obligatory in some languages
• Codas much rarer
– many languages do not have codas
• Clusters are also rarer

Syllables structure

Some RP allophones
• Allophones of /l/
• coda /l/ is dark [lˠ] (older [ɫ])
– velarised: back of tongue raised
• onset /l/ is light
– non-velarised
• ‘pal’ vs. ‘lap’
• ‘pill’ vs. ‘lip’
• ‘tell’ vs. ‘let’

Some RP allophones

Some RP allophones
• Allophones of voiceless plosives
– initial plosives are aspirated
• produced with abducted vocal folds
– final plosives are pre-glottalised
• produced with adducted vocal folds
• pre-pause and pre-consonantal
• ‘pill’ [pʰɪlˠ]
• ‘lip’ [lɪʔp͡]
– Use of tie-bar to show that symbols are not a cluster
– we can use the same thing for affricates, i.e. [tʃ͡]

Some RP allophones
• Vowel duration + final obstruent
– obstruent = plosives, fricatives, affricate
• Vowel is longer before voiced obstruent
– not the vowel length contrast, just phonetic
– peace /piːs/ vs. peas /piːz/
– hiss /hɪs/ vs. his /hɪz/
– phonetic transcription uses half-length diacritic [ˑ]
– use is logical (once you think about it!)

Some RP allophones
• Short vowel + voiced > half-long
– hiss /hɪs/ vs. his /hɪz/
– hiss [hɪs] vs. his [hɪˑz]
• Long vowel already long
– becomes half-long + voiceless
– peace /piːs/ vs. peas /piːz/
– peace [pʰiˑs] vs. peas [pʰiːz]
– This works even if the final sound is devoiced, i.e. no vocal fold
vibration, so [hɪˑz̥] (cf. whispered speech)

Some RP allophones
• Nasalisation
– Nasal consonants produced with lowered velum
• allows air (and sound) into nasal cavity
• Lowering the velum (velic lowering) takes time
– vowel + nasal consonant > nasalised vowel
– ‘sad’ [sæˑd̥]
– ‘sang’ [sæ̃ŋ]

Some RP allophones
• Fronting of velars
– velar sounds produced with tongue back (dorsum)
• place of articulation border of hard & soft palate
• adjacent vowels modify tongue shape
– front vowel – velar becomes fronted (pre-palatal)
– back vowel – velar becomes backed (post-velar)
• ‘keep’ [kʰ̟iˑʔp͡]
• ‘curb’ [kʰɜːb̥]
• ‘carp’ [k̠ʰɑˑʔp͡]

Some RP allophones
• Vowel retraction before dark /l/
– ‘bid’ [bɪd]
– ‘bill’ [bɪ̠lˠ]
• Produces a range of allophones
– ‘tell’ vs. ‘ted’ [tʰɛ̠lˠ]
– ‘pal’ vs. ‘pad’ [pʰæ̠lˠ]
• The retracted vowels shift in the vowel space

Retracted vowels

Crosslinguistic differences
• Phonemes in English
• /r/ vs. /l/
• ‘rap’ vs. ‘lap’
• ‘rack’ vs. ‘lack’
– not phonemes in Korean or Japanese
• ‘park’ /ɑ/ vs. ‘pack’ /æ/
– quality difference not phonemic in Arabic
– duration is!

Crosslinguistic differences
• Allophones in English
– [ɕ] in ‘sheep’ and [ʃ] in ‘shark’
– both contextual variants of /ʃ/
• phonemes in Mandarin & Polish, /ɕ/ vs. /ʃ/
– [ t̪] in ‘eighth’ and [t] in ‘eight’
• phonemes in Malayalam, Gunywingu

Reading
• Ashby, Michael, & John Maidment (2005) Introducing
Phonetic Science, CUP (chapter 9)
• Giegerich, Heinz J. (2003). English phonology. CUP,
Cambridge (chapter 2)
• Roach, Peter (2000). English phonetics & phonology.
CUP, Cambridge (chapters 5 & 8)
• Cruttenden, Alan. (2001). Gimson’s Pronunciation of
English. Arnold (chapter 9)
Questions? Email Mark: markjjones@cantab.net